Formative Years

By Helen Adams

A/N: 5th season SGA episode “The Shrine” contained a touching scene where Rodney speaks of dimly remembering his mother speaking to him, but not being able to understand because it was so long ago. Something about it suggested that it was the passage of time as much as his illness that made Rodney’s memory so uncertain. There is a striking difference between that scene and the one Rodney shared with Sam Carter in the SG1 episode “Redemption” about his parents blaming him (aged 12) for their hatred of each other. Also, Rodney and Jeannie both mention their father several times but never seem to bring up their mother. Resultant of thinking about these things, plot bunnies attacked and this was the result.

Douglas and Susan McKay had looked forward eagerly to the birth of their first child, but Susan’s health had been fragile even before she became pregnant and the birth was a difficult one. Blood loss and complications left her bed-ridden for weeks, and though she did eventually rejoin her family and take up the abandoned threads of her life again, the healing was never complete.

~*~*~*~*~

Meredith Rodney McKay was the light of his mother’s life and the apple of his father’s eye. They doted on him lovingly and he flourished in the warmth of their affection. Daddy played games with him every night as soon as he came home, never too tired to spend time with his little boy. Every night when she put him to bed, Mommy would tell him wonderful stories about strange far-away lands that lived far away in the stars. If he closed his eyes and tried hard, he could almost see them for himself.

Meredith was just a week past his third birthday when a case of pneumonia, caught while helping him play with his birthday present snow-sled in the cold Toronto winter, took her away from him forever.

Daddy never again came home early just to play with him.

~*~*~*~*~

Douglas McKay struggled with being a single father and trying to hold down a job, while still grieving the sudden loss of his beloved wife. He was a merely smart man who had been born at the tail end of three generations of genius, and as a result he had always felt inadequate. What pride could be found in being a mediocre high-school math teacher, when his forebears had all been linguists, chemists, biologists, surgeons, and other professions that all but screamed of brilliance?

His sense of failure only increased when he was faced with an emotionally devastated toddler; a three-year-old who was already showing disconcerting signs that he might become the most brilliant member of the McKay line yet.

When the child, affectionately nicknamed Mer by his late mother, began exhibiting even more of those startling flashes of genius, recognizing concepts far beyond his tender years, Douglas felt only despair. How would he possibly take care of such a child all alone?

It had been barely a year since Susan’s death, and in his heart he knew that he was not ready to move on, but he sternly ignored the warnings of his heart. In an impulse that would strike him as insane only much later, Douglas proposed marriage to Evelyn, a woman that he had dated only a few times. He knew that she had strong feelings for him and hoped that her love would be enough for them both.

He justified his actions by telling himself that he was doing what was best for the child.

The wedding was rushed and unromantic, and unsurprisingly, the resulting marriage quickly proved to be a disaster. The couple found that they had little in common once they started living together day to day. The new Mrs. McKay felt used, and quickly overwhelmed by the burden of being step-mother to a child barely four-years-old who might very possibly be smarter than she was.

~*~*~*~*~

Eventually, the newly built family grew used to one another and things calmed down. Mer was a cheerful little boy with dark-blond curls and big blue eyes and Evelyn found herself growing rather fond of him, though she never entirely lost her discomfort.

Hugs and kisses were a rarity in the McKay household and the boy grew up believing that such standoffishness was normal.

~*~*~*~*~

Meredith’s intelligence seemed to grow with every passing year. By the age of five he could read, write and do math at a level that some children twice his age would balk at. He both thrilled and intimidated his father, and his step-mother continued to regard him as being a slightly freakish, if sweet, child. They argued about him often, never able to agree on the best way to meet his growing wants and needs, never quite sure what those needs might be.

~*~*~*~*~

By age six, Mer was in trouble more often than not and his parents were fighting constantly.

When the arguments were fiercest, he would find a small dark space to hide in, covering his head and pretending that the angry shouts and the crash of breaking objects were not really happening. Curling into a tight ball, he would hold his breath, trying to stop the noises of his own sobbing from joining the horrible cacophony of sound. Sometimes he would hold it for so long that he grew light-headed and dizzy, which only frightened him more.

As he grew older, he would come to hate small spaces for the helpless half-strangled feeling they would bring, even when he could no longer remember why he felt that way.

~*~*~*~*~

The school made cutbacks and Dad lost his job. The family was forced to move when they could no longer pay the bills and Dad could not find another teaching position locally. It would be the first of several moves, and several job changes, the nomadic lifestyle and lack of personal ties becoming yet another thing, like the fighting and lack of physical affection, which Mer had come to think of as normal.

~*~*~*~*~

Music was a gift from heaven.

Well, actually, it was a gift from Mother. In her desperation to keep him busy and out of trouble, Mother had insisted on buying a small cabinet piano and teaching him how to play. Dad had argued that it was a waste of money, insisting that a boy so easily and quickly distracted by the wonders of the world around him would never be able to focus long enough to make the lessons worthwhile.

To the surprise of Dad and the triumphant delight of Mother, Mer took to music like a duck to water. For hours at a time, he would study the sheets of music, seeing order and perfection in the patterns of small black dots and dashes spread so beautifully between the lines.

Within a month, he knew what sound every small note represented on the piano’s keyboard, within two, he could find each key without looking at his hands. Chords, melodies, harmonies, incidentals, it all made perfect sense to him. Within a year, he could copy any song put before him on the keyboard.

Life was all but perfect. And then . . . she came.

~*~*~*~*~

After three years of failed attempts, Evelyn’s pregnancy came as complete shock to both herself and Douglas. Delighted, she looked for her husband to share in her joy, but found that he could not. The idea of another child frightened him. What if Evelyn were to die, or become a virtual invalid, just as his first wife had? What would he do if he found himself alone again, but this time with two young children to raise?

His concern was touching and his selfishness was irritating, both at the same time. No matter how frequently she assured him that nothing bad was going to happen, he continued to fret and fuss, growing snappish and irritable in the face of a situation over which he had no control.

The baby was born a week early, with no complications. A beautiful little girl whom they called Jean Marie. Douglas calmed as his fears were proved unwarranted, and soon fell head over heels in love with his new daughter. He did his best to hide the fact that he was fonder of the child than he was of her mother. Evelyn tried to hide the fact that she loved Jeannie more than she did her step-son.

Neither one was fooled.

~*~*~*~*~

School proved to be a disaster for Mer. Everything they taught was pathetically simple and already learned long ago. After a month in grade-one, he had been skipped all the way to grade-three but he was still restless and bored every day. Even recess brought no relief. The other kids simply did not like him, and made fun of him at every opportunity. They called him a know-it-all and a show-off because he always knew every answer in class. They claimed he was a sissy-boy because his parents had given him a girl’s name. He tried to fight back when they pushed him around, but a six-year-old, no matter how smart, was just no match for a pack of bullying eight-year-olds. Then they said he was nothing but a baby because, sooner or later, they always made him cry.

Home was just as bad. Mother was busy with the baby now, and when he tried to help she always told him to just run along and play. He tried to tell Dad how much he hated school, but Dad told him to be a big boy and not cry when the other kids taunted him. They were only jealous of how smart he was. Then Dad would go back to his study and shut the door, leaving Mer on the outside, alone.

~*~*~*~*~

The fighting had stopped for awhile, but started up again even worse than before when Jeannie was about six-months old. It always began with something small, something petty, something that was somehow his fault, and it would only grow from there.

Meredith was too big for hiding spaces now, so when the arguments began he would go to the piano and play, losing himself in the music and finding a safe haven from the shouts and curses and the wailing of an unhappy infant. He could transport himself to anywhere on the wings of that music, to a new city, or a new country, even a whole other planet. He thought that maybe one day, if he played well enough and long enough, the music might spiral him up into the center of that big vortex of stars Dad had shown him in a picture once. The heart of the Milky Way galaxy. Maybe the vortex would suck him right through and he could finally find out what was on the other side.

~*~*~*~*~

When he was seven-years-old, Meredith McKay nearly died. His parents had always made lunch for him to take to school. They were fussy about what he could eat, though they never told him why, just that the doctor, who had given him shots and taken some of his blood before he began school, had said it was a good idea.

How could anyone have known that the pretty new girl in his grade-four class, who so sweetly offered to share half her orange with him at lunchtime, was actually offering poison?

She had screamed desperately for help when Mer had started choking. His throat had closed up so tight he could not draw a breath and by the time the ambulance had come he was turning blue. The ride was scary and confusing, men in uniforms had forced a tube down his throat and put a shot of something in his arm that stung badly but somehow helped him to breathe again.

Mer had cried the whole way to the hospital. He cried again when Mother and Dad scolded him for eating citrus when they had warned him not to. They simply would not listen when he told them that he had not known what it was.

Their son’s close call got him a week away from school, but for Douglas and Evelyn McKay, it proved to be nothing more than another log to throw on the bonfire of their mutual hatred.

~*~*~*~*~

At age eight, Rodney - as he now insisted on being called everywhere but home, where nobody listened to him anyway – had been moved all the way up to grade-six. It was strange and intimidating to be surrounded by kids half again his age, but on the plus side the subjects were more interesting and the kids were nicer to him here.

The boys seemed to regard the brilliant little boy as some sort of mascot and the girls liked to baby him. Babying was irritating most of the time, but not when girls gave him cupcakes and Chee-tos and other good things to eat. He had learned his lesson about eating anything made with lemon, lime or oranges, even the artificial stuff that probably wouldn’t really hurt him, but everything else was fair game and he always felt better after he’d had something to eat.

~*~*~*~*~

Jeannie was two now, running, talking and getting into his stuff on a regular basis. Rodney had not wanted to like her, but he kind of did anyway. She was cute, in an annoying little-kid way, and she smiled whenever she saw him. Jeannie always laughed and tried to hug him and though he never told anybody else, he liked it when she did.

~*~*~*~*~

There was no more skipping of grades after that year. Grades 7 and 8 passed in a haze of boredom but Dad flatly refused to let him advance any faster. Rodney knew that he was smart enough but his father insisted that part of an education was experiencing class structure and social interaction among peers. It would be difficult enough to be starting high school as an eleven, soon-to-be twelve-year-old and eventually graduating at fifteen. Going through college at those ages would be unthinkable. Rodney had his doubts on that score, but Dad was a teacher and had been around high-school kids for a long time. Maybe there was some possibility that he knew what he was talking about.

Rodney’s life seemed to improve once high-school began. He was bullied frequently by the jocks and preppies and treated like some kind of pet by most of the other kids, but he at least was able to maintain a stable existence in a single school for the first time in his life. By taking on as many advanced level classes and extra-curricular activities as his parents and the school officials would allow, he managed to keep his mind at least somewhat engaged.

It was not until the summer after his freshman year that things fell apart again. First there was the music teacher who told him that his closely-held dream of being a concert pianist would never come to pass. No art in his music, the man had said. Just mechanical precision, a player-piano preprogrammed with songs that held no soul. Not that the teacher had put it in those exact words, but Rodney could read between the lines. He hardly looked at the instrument after that, unable to bear the pain of his failure.

Then, just as he began to wonder what other distraction he could possibly find to rescue him from the never ending fights of Dad and Mother, there was no longer any need of one. With a spate of cuss-words that would have got his own mouth washed out with soap for sure if he had dared to use them, Evelyn McKay walked out of their lives.

She tried to persuade Jeannie to come with her, but Jeannie was amazingly stubborn for a six-year-old and insisted that she would go nowhere without her Meredith. For once, Rodney did not mind his little sister’s insistence on calling him by his first name. He was touched. Knowing that his sister loved him better than anyone else in the world almost made up for the pain of hearing that the only mother he had ever known did not want him.

Almost.

Evelyn gave in with achingly little effort. Jeannie was showing every sign of bearing the McKay genius, a title to which Rodney had already been certified, and perhaps their mother did not feel that she could cope with Jeannie’s intelligence any more than she had with his. That did not make her easy capitulation any less painful for any of them.

Jeannie cried her eyes out for a week, then her naturally sunny disposition seemed to take over and the tears stopped. She smiled and laughed again, though she remained far more likely to cling to her big brother than she ever had before.

He often woke to the feeling of Jeannie sneaking in under his covers at night, wanting to cuddle up close to him and feel safe. Rodney never sent her away, resting his cheek on her soft golden curls as he wrapped her in his arms and told her silly bedtime stories that he made up on the spot. Her soft sleepy giggles were the best sedative in the world and by morning she had always disappeared back into her own room. Rodney was never quite sure which one of them appreciated the closeness more.

~*~*~*~*~

Science had taken over as Rodney’s abiding passion once he gave up music. He craved order and there was a symmetrical beauty found in math and science that was just as good as that which he’d found in musical notes. If he wrapped himself closely enough in theoretical physics, working to prove the unproven, then he never had to think about the mother who had never come back, or the father who drew further inside himself every year, or the kids who still never seemed to like him no matter how hard he tried to fit in with them.

~*~*~*~*~

At age 15, a few months shy of graduation, Rodney joined the Algebra club at his high school. He did so claiming that it would help him get into the University of his choice, even though he’d already had more than a dozen offers, but the honest truth was the he had joined because April Bingham was a member. April was 17-years-old, a senior with pixie-cut blonde hair, green eyes that had inspired more than one soppy poem scribbled into the margins of his notebook, and a body that regularly turned Rodney’s stack of textbooks into a hallway necessity.

He had tried a million times to think of something witty and clever to say to her, but when they came face to face the best he could ever manage was a goofy grin and some inanely stupid comment about math. He was convinced that she thought he was a moron who had been put in the advanced classes by mistake.

April had been out sick for a couple of days and everyone but Rodney had been paired up for a partner exercise. He was sure that he would be sitting this one out when April showed up late, flame-cheeked with embarrassment over her tardiness. With Rodney the only one left without a partner, she had set her books on his desk and pulled her chair up very close to study his notes.

At least that’s what she claimed.

Rodney nearly jumped out of his skin, emitting a startled squeak of surprise that drew odd looks and snickering from his classmates, when he felt a dainty hand slide up his jean clad thigh and squeeze.

Everyone got back to work except Rodney and April. He had solved every equation on the board within the first two minutes and since they were partners, April was free to do as she liked. And as her hand continued to massage his thigh, Rodney began to get the distinct and giddily unbelievable hope that what she wanted to do . . . just might be him.

“I’ve always thought you were really cute,” she whispered, giggling in that way she had that made his temperature rise about ten degrees. “And really smart.”

Rodney fought down the impulse to agree with her assessment, knowing how much that annoyed everybody. Usually, he liked annoying people, it was amusing, but right now he had high hopes for something better. He opened his mouth to tell her that she was beautiful and clever in return, but what came out was, “Can I kiss you?”

He winced. Oh, sure. In the back of Algebra club, right here in front of God and everybody, the gorgeous and super-popular April Bingham was really going to kiss the school nerd. Sure that she had only been teasing him, he waited for her to laugh and point him up to the rest of the class as the loser everybody said he was.

Instead, she flashed that perfect row of blinding-white teeth, licked her plump cherry glossed lips, and said, “Okay.”

Before he could move, she leaned forward and pressed her mouth against his. She was not at all shy and though his own kissing experience was severely limited, Rodney could tell that hers was not. The kiss went on and on, making him light-headed from lack of oxygen as she examined his mouth with a thoroughness he was sure his dentist had never even come close to.

At last, amid a flurry of shocked giggling as the rest of the class caught on to what was happening behind them, April pulled away. She reached out a finger, brushed a streak of cherry gloss off his mouth, and smiled.

Rodney smiled back, and then fainted dead away.

~*~*~*~*~

His first real kiss had been a costly one. It turned out that April’s high color when she had come in late had not been caused by embarrassment, but by mononucleosis, which she had kindly passed on to Rodney.

He was sick as a dog and missed an entire month of school. Even when he came back he periodically felt weak and woozy and had to stop moving until the world stopped spinning. For the first time in his life, he had to scramble to catch up to the rest of his class in schoolwork and absolutely everyone, including his father, and especially his sister, teased him mercilessly about what had happened.

It had been so worth it.

~*~*~*~*~

Surprising absolutely everyone who knew him, Rodney opted to take some time off before continuing his academic career. With the grudging permission of his father, who worried about him but felt that it would be good for Rodney to broaden his horizons before settling down to a scientific or academic career, he worked his way through North America, then took off for Europe.

His hair had darkened from blond to brown over the years and his features had filled out handsomely. With the heavy beard growth that had come to him with the onset of puberty and a few extra inches of height on his lean frame, Rodney had no trouble passing for an adult in any of the locations he visited.

Over the space of two years, he learned about languages, cultures, art and life in general, and cemented his certainty that he really did possess one of the greatest minds in the world today. He gained experience in, and appreciation for, a great number of things, but discovered that he really was every bit as bad at dealing with people as he had often feared.

They were just so very . . . stupid.

~*~*~*~*~

At eighteen, Rodney returned to Canada to start his University studies. He had made up his mind one balmy evening while staring up at the star-filled sky over Germany, that astrophysics would be his career of choice. The beauty of space, the order of theoretical mathematics, the pleasure of only rarely having to deal with other people. It was perfect.

Jeannie was twelve now and well on her way to matching her brother’s academic genius. It worried him sometimes, wondering if she might actually be smarter than he was. She did not seem to have his natural social dysfunction to worry about either. Jeannie was popular, well-liked and made conversation easily. She was pretty and funny, and quick-witted enough to give even him competition in the sarcasm department.

Rodney was proud of her. He loved his baby sister more than he could ever express, and hoped that on some level, she understood the words he was too embarrassed to say to her face.

~*~*~*~*~

Rodney was twenty-three years old when he earned his first Doctorate. From the commencement stage, he could see his father in the first row of the audience, clapping his hands so hard they surely had to be in pain, tears of pride trickling down his smiling face. Next to him, Jeannie snapped pictures like a mad paparazzi, her grin so wide that Rodney wondered idly if it might be visible from space.

A year later, he earned a second PhD in Engineering. It never hurt to know that you would always be able to put everything back together correctly after some idiot had managed to break it.

~*~*~*~*~

A few months after graduation, while Rodney was still settling into a new job with a top secret foundation in the United States, he received word that Douglas McKay had suffered a fatal heart-attack.

There had been no opportunity to say goodbye, or to discuss any of the million and one things they should have talked about and never did. Rodney felt cheated and he knew that feeling would never entirely go away.

He attended the funeral for Jeannie’s sake. Helped her put their father’s affairs in order and made certain that his sister’s schooling was safely and securely funded, and that her friends would look after her once he had gone. He even paid a courtesy visit to Evelyn, taking her a few bits of the past that Douglas had kept for sentimental value. They engaged in painfully stilted small-talk for a torturous half-hour until it seemed acceptable that he should go.

Rodney did not miss the relief in Mother's eyes when he stood up and held out his hand for her to shake. It therefore surprised him when she hugged him tightly instead, and even more so when she pressed a roll of worn sheet-music into his hands as he left. It was the book she had taught him to play by.

After leaving the house, Rodney spent an hour staring at the bright new headstone denoting his father’s final resting place, mind completely empty and unfocussed for once in his life.

Finally, he turned away and walked until he found himself downtown. He searched for awhile until he came across a seedy little bar where he knew that nobody would ask any questions.

For the bargain price of two hundred dollars, Rodney bought a bottle of his father’s favorite single-malt scotch and the rental of one slightly out of tune piano for the entire night.

He played every song he had ever known, the music coming back to him easily, though it had been half a lifetime since he had last touched an instrument.

Finishing the last of the bottle just as the sun began to rise; Meredith Rodney McKay tossed the roll of sheet-music into a garbage can, and gently closed the cover over the piano keys. Nodding silent thanks to the bartender, he swayed only slightly as he walked outside and caught a taxi to the airport.

With no luggage except his wallet, passport and a laptop computer, Rodney bought a one way ticket towards the future.

He never looked back.

THE END

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